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C’est la vie

This semester I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do with my life and my degree. I’m at the end of my Junior year already, it’s getting scary!

We had our annual spring choir concert tonight and I am sad it’s over. I still have 3 more semesters with the choir but knowing certain people are seniors and are leaving kind of makes me sad because I know I’ll never sing with this particular group again! 😦

Before every concert all 80 of us get in a huge circle for some jokes and inspirational music-related quotes then the seniors share about their time with choir. I almost cried a few times because this has definitely been my favorite group! One of my closest friends from cheer leading is graduating and my roommate is graduating as well! 😦 Sad day!

Listening to all of the seniors share about how being a part of chorale has changed their lives made me think back to when I joined as a sophomore. I remember being so nervous at my audition and thenso nervous at my first practice with the choir. I remember getting so frustrated because I couldn’t read music and I walked out of practice a few times and told my friends I didn’t think I was good enough to be in the choir. Everyone was so welcoming to me and told me not to quit and not to give up and that I made it past auditions so I must be good enough. The choir director, the people in choir, even our accompanist offered to help me learn to read music and if all else fails play it by ear. I stuck with it and I’m so glad I did because even though I’m still really shy about singing in front of people being in choir has given me so much confidence. I started choir singing like a mouse now I’m one of the loudest in my section lol.

I’ve been singing since I was able to talk but the first time I fell in love with musical theater was when I was in high school and me and my best friend went to see Wicked which is now my favorite musical. I remember starting college resenting my parents because I wanted to be a musical theatre major and they told me there wasn’t many jobs in musical theater for black people. My brother defended me and told them they should let me because he thought I was a really good singer and a good actor, but my parents said they didn’t have money to throw away on me studying a dead art that wouldn’t get me work. I argued that if I go to a school known for their alumni I’d get a job, they didn’t want to hear it. I know they enjoy hearing me sing but this situation just made me feel like they didn’t believe that I could and that I wasn’t good enough, so I stepped away from the theater and away from music but I guess I couldn’t stay away; I got involved in theater again, took a piano class, and joined choir. My sophomore year I and a group of students went to see Billy Elliot and it was like I fell in love all over again. All I could think about was how much I wanted to be on stage. People don’t expect this from me because I’m really shy and quiet but I love musical theater because I think the art of it is that when the actor has run out of words to explain the way they feel, they sing. Simply speaking doesn’t do their feelings justice. I love how I can feel what they feel when they sing and I love acting because I like being someone else and since I’m so reserved it’s fun to portray a character that is so unlike me.

So my parents and I reached a compromise, they told me not to be a major but to be a scholar and if, after I graduate I still want to go to AMDA I’d have to pay for it myself. Maybe I will because no matter how much I stay away from the theater and how much I stay away from music it finds me and I’m drawn to it anyway and it’s like I never stopped. It’s an unexplainable feeling, it’s as if you’re so happy you could die right now and you feel like your life is complete. You know what you’re supposed to be doing.

I love kids (why I wanted to be a teacher, then a pediatric nurse, then open my own cheer gym, then adopt children lol)

I love cheering

I love sports (why I wanted to be a coach)

I love cooking and feeding people -why I wanted to be a chef, and my food is awesome, everyone says so lol 🙂

I love to write poetry and short stories

I love more things but I can’t think of them right now

The point that I am trying to make is that I’m a very diverse person, I hate school because I hate waking up everyday with a schedule, knowing what the day will bring: wake up at 7:30, class at 8, break at 9, class from 10-12, lunch at 12, lab at 1, choir at 3. every mon wed frid, it’s always the same boring ass shit, going to classes that bore the hell out of me sitting there thinking why the fuck would I care about the circulatory system of a damn fish? Am I going to be a marine biologist? Hell no! I had to get up for this? Seriously? I hate school. I like not having plans and going where the day takes me. I’m the kind of person who has an achin for some bacon and gets up and goes to the store just to buy bacon. I seriously did that once in the middle of the night lol.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do in life and I think that’s the point, I think that God gives us gifts and appreciations for things and that it’s a sin to ignore them. If you’re a dancer, dance, if you’re a singer, sing! If you’re like me and have a hell of a lot of interests, do all of them! I’m a psychology major who sings, dances, cheers, coaches, fund-raises, advocates for non-profits, started her own non-profit, and cooks. Maybe one day I will go back to school and study musical theater, maybe I won’t; maybe I’ll write musicals, maybe I won’t; maybe I’ll open my own competitive cheer gym, maybe I won’t; maybe I’ll go to culinary school for the hell of it, maybe I won’t; maybe I will travel to London and go to the Adelphi Theatre (I really, really want to so I won’t even say maybe I won’t because I’d better!)

We don’t know what life will bring us, we just know what we enjoy and I think it is a shame that so many people go through life thinking we have to choose just one thing and stay with it for the rest of our lives. How are we supposed to do that!? We are all dynamic and we should all be able to explore our interests freely. One of my psych professors talked about how in some countries people major in what they love and make money from it but how in the U.S people major in something they can tolerate so that they can make money from it. That’s our idea of happiness. What a shame because in their 40s they realize it’s all a lie, my dad is starting to realize this now actually, they’re not happy with their picket fence and their dog and keeping up with the Jonses. It’s a system that needs to change because all it gives us is a bunch of stressed out people who aren’t happy and aren’t fulfilled teaching their children to be the same. It’s so rare that you find parents telling their children to embrace what they love and fully supporting their dreams. When I changed to psychology my cousin looked at me and said, “can I strangle you? You know how much psychologists make, right?” I said I refuse to live my life thinking, “what if” and being afraid to live. I’d rather enjoy what I study than be miserable now so that I can be a rich and miserable person later. WTF kind of sense does that make? I’m young, I want to live, if I have kids I’ll teach them to do the same. I’m a Christian and I believe that if you follow God’s plan for you, which contrary to popular belief is usually what you love doing because it is God who put that in your heart, then you will be okay. People will talk till their blue in the face about Jesus and God and blah blah blah but look at their lives, if they live a life of worry and fear, they’re not living like a true believer and I point that out to them and they aresilent. This is what a Christian is, this is what we are supposed to do,

Romans 12:2-do not be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

So many people think that verse is about caving into lust and greed and what not but it is about life in general! WE ARE NOT OF THE WORLD, SO WE NEED TO LIVE LIKE IT! So often people can’t tell the difference between a believer and a non-believer because the lifestyles are so similar. A believer does what they love because it was God who put that love in our hearts in the first place, a believer doesn’t worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself, a believer IS different. But so often we see Christians who are the exact opposite of all of those things!

I’m so tired of people telling me what to major in, how to live, what to say, how to act, and what is good and acceptable and perfect. What is good and acceptable and perfect is what is in my heart because it was put there my The Perfect One, Himself. I say this to my parents all the time, “do not worry about me, your job is done, I answer to God now.” But telling parents not to worry is like telling them not to breathe.

I don’t know where life will lead me but I follow my heart and thus follow God in doing so. The beauty of life is that we tell God our plans and He laughs at them and says, You think you know, but you have no idea.